So naturally, he keeps taking my dinosaurs.
When I told my mother what I was getting Timmy for Christmas, she goes, “Jason, why don’t you just let him have yours. You don’t play with them anymore.”
She still didn’t understand. “I know I don’t play with them,” I said. “You’re not supposed to. They’re a collection. You’re supposed to look at them.”
“You’re supposed to add to them too, aren’t you?”
“I almost have them all,” I told her. “I can’t find any more.”
“I never see you looking at them.”
“I can’t help that. I do look.”
“Don’t get smart.”
“I do.”
“You took them out of your room.”
“Yeah—to make room for the space station. You’re the one that said it was a flophouse up there.”
“Flophouse? Did I say that?”
“Forget it,” I said. I walked away.
She calls. “Jason.”
“What?”
“You got them in the toy departments, didn’t you?”
Screams. Fists. Atomic bombs.
So, to get Ham to stop saying “What, no dinosaurs?” and to show my mother I was still interested in them, I grabbed my Christmas list back and added to it in giant red letters:
PODOKESAURUS
When people think of dinosaurs they think of the biggest animals that ever roamed the earth. But that’s not the whole truth. Dinosaurs came in all sizes. There were medium-size ones. And little ones too. The littlest dinosaur was podokesaurus. It wasn’t much bigger than a chicken. Imagine little dinosaurs running around a barnyard. Or seeing them all lined up under plastic wrap on the meat counter at the A&P. Imagine.
Like I said, I just did it to get Ham and Mom off my back. I know they won’t be able to find a podokesaurus. I never could. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up either. Podokesaurus is still the only one missing from my collection—or at least the only one I really care about—and even though when I grow up I might lose some of my interest, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, I’ll always keep an eye out for the chicken-size dinosaur.
Well, I won. Sort of. Ham knocked off the dinosaur stuff, all right. He started in with a new one: “Aha: clothes!”
On the last Saturday night before Christmas we had to go to a play. One that Ham was in. Except for Timmy—he got a babysitter. I told my mother I’d be glad to babysit, but she dragged me and Cootyhead along.
It was in an old barn. At least it used to be a barn. They took out the hay and the cowpoop and put in these crummy old benches and this dinky stage without even a curtain. And that’s supposed to be a theater. I always thought Ham acted in a real theater. Velvet curtain. Strings of lightbulbs. Posters. Uh-uh. It’s a barn.
The play was too long. It was about this salesman. That was Ham. I never figured out what he was supposed to be selling. His name was Willy.
Ham’s voice sounded funny. It was lower. And they made his hair gray. He had a wife and two sons. They were pretty much grown up, but they were still living at home. One of them was named Biff, I think. He kept talking about going out west and having a ranch.
The whole thing didn’t make any sense. I mean, nothing happened. Biff talked about going out west, and Willy was going off selling something, and then he lost his job and then he begged his boss to give it back but he wouldn’t, and every once in a while this old dude in a suit pops out and goes, “Ah went intuh the jungle, and when Ah came out—bah God—Ah was rich!”
Another weird thing: people didn’t come onto the stage from the sides or behind. I mean, there wasn’t any backstage. They just stood at the end of the aisle between the benches where the audience (us) came in, and ran down the aisle and onto the stage from the front. Like I said, it wasn’t a real theater.
So I happen to be sitting on the end of our bench, next to the aisle, and we’re toward the back, and this one time I look over and up and who’s standing right next to me but Ham. About an inch away. He looked even goofier close up. They even made his eyebrows gray. His cheeks were orange.
I kept waiting for him to look down and give me one of his weird looks or clever comments. But he didn’t. He just stared straight ahead at the stage. His head was nodding a little and his Adam’s apple was going and his lips were moving. I knew he knew I was right there. The more he didn’t look at me the more I was tempted to tap him on the leg. I don’t know why. It just sort of made me mad, him acting like I wasn’t there. I was going to give him a shot in the knee and tell him, “Hey—who you trying to fool? You’re Ham.” Just then his whole face changes. He roars something from right over my head, tears down the aisle, and next thing you know there he is up on stage, in the spotlight.
At long last the end came. I was just about asleep by then. I only remember someone going, “We’re free… We’re free…” I was surprised at how loud the clapping got when they took their bows. Ham got the loudest.
When we were walking out I asked my mother, “What happened to Ham?”
“You mean Willy?”
“Yeah.”
“Weren’t you watching?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” she said, “Willy dies.”
On the last day of school before Christmas I went to a basketball game. Not to see the game—we’re crummy in basketball—but to see Debbie Breen. She was cheerleading.
For a couple days after the snowball fight at Monroe, she was in school with a patch on her ear. It was really cute, because the patch stopped about halfway down her earlobe, so she could put her earring on.
One day I finally got up the nerve, and I said to her, “Hey, we got something in common.”
“What’s that?” she goes. It was the first time I looked her in the eye since I hit her. I could tell she never knew it was me.
I said, “We both had patches. Me on my eye, you on your ear.”
“Hey,” she goes, “that’s right!”
I was so surprised and happy by the way she acted—all excited and friendly—that all of a sudden I wanted to say all kinds of stuff. Stuff that was boiling inside me for days: It was me that hit you with the snowball and I hope you’ll forgive me now. I’d chop off my little finger to stop you from crying. Are you ready to come see my space station now? How about tonight? I think about you all the time. Do you ever think about me? You’re beautiful. Wanna go for a pizza? I wish I could give you a Christmas present. I’d get you anything you want. Do you like me? I love you. Do you think we could ever get married someday? Who were you with on Halloween?
But I didn’t say any of that. I said, “Go on any hayrides lately?”
And she said, “Kill any dragons lately?”
We laughed. It was like marshmallows melting together.
During the basketball game I watched every move she made. On the court cheering. On the bench. I liked seeing all that bare leg. During the winter about all you ever see is face. I imagined what she’d look like cheering in high school. Splits. Cartwheels. Handstands. Tights. She flicked her head a lot.
A couple girls were sitting behind me. I heard one of them say, “Who’s that one?”
And the other one said, “Debbie somebody.”
And the first one said, “She’s pretty.”
I smiled to myself: Yeah she’s pretty all right. That’s Debbie Breen. I went on a hayride with her. That’s right—that cheerleader. I roasted her hotdogs and marshmallows. We talk to each other. Yeah. She kinda likes me. She’s coming over to my house to see my space station. We’ll probably start going together pretty soon.
They did a cheer where each of the cheerleaders had one of the letters of our nickname: Bulldogs. Like the first one would jump up and yell: “Gimme a B!” and everybody in the stands yells: “B!”
Debbie had the second L. At least to everybody else she did. Not to me. I sort of sat back for the rest of the game, with my eyes half closed, and here’s what I saw in the middle of the cou
rt: Debbie Breen, hanging in the air, legs wide, arms to the lights, sweater bottom halfway up her stomach, screaming at the stands—at the world—with all her heart:
“GIMME A J!”
On the last day before Christmas I got sick. I threw up. I ached all over. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t believe it. Sick. Of all times! My mother kept bringing me tea and asking if I wanted soup and softboiled eggs. I couldn’t get out of bed. I was dying. God, no. Let me die after Christmas!
The head of my bed is next to the window overlooking the yard. Every once in a while I dragged my head up enough to look out. There was snow on the ground. Once I saw a squirrel go by. I kept looking, and in a minute he came back the other way. I kept looking and the squirrel kept doing it, back and forth, back and forth. Dug his own little trench in the snow. I could only see that corner of the yard, so I couldn’t tell where he was going or where he was coming from. I could only see him racing, and that’s what he was doing: racing. Like something was after him. I got tired and lay back down. When I looked again, later, there he was, back and forth, back and forth—racing, racing…
And then I got the weirdest, craziest feeling: the squirrel was trying to make me better. I didn’t know why, or how. I couldn’t see where he was coming from or going to. But there he was—back and forth, back and forth, racing, all day long—and I just couldn’t get that crazy idea out of my head.
And sure enough, next day, Christmas, I was better.
PRESENTS
MY PILE WAS IN THE MIDDLE, SIZE-WISE. BIGGER THAN MOM’S and Ham’s. Smaller than Timmy’s and Cootyhead’s. I didn’t care. I had a quality pile. For instance, I got a digital watch. It hardly took up any room, but I wouldn’t trade it for Cootyhead’s twirling baton or Timmy’s giant clown balloon.
The other good things I got were a pocket calculator, three rolls of aluminum foil for my space station, and a bunch of clothes. No podokesaurus, of course.
When Timmy opened up the dinosaurs, I could tell right away he didn’t like them as much as mine. He was craziest about his Tommy gun. He calls it a Thomas gun.
My mother liked the notepaper I got her. With matching envelopes with a design on the inside.
Ham liked his book. Burbage: Greatest Shakespearean Actor.
One good thing about a broken family: when you open your last Christmas present at home, and you’re sad because there aren’t any more, all of a sudden it occurs to you you still have one parent to go. There’s another Christmas coming up.
We went to my father’s the next day, me and Cootyhead. Timmy was all upset because he couldn’t come. He wanted two fathers too, so he could get a double dose of presents. I told him my father got him a big pile of presents anyway, but since he wasn’t coming along I was going to have to keep them for myself. As usual he started bawling, and as usual I had to tell him I was only kidding.
My mother gets furious with me for teasing him, but she can’t stop me. I can’t stop me. I take one look at him and out it comes. Like, “There’s a tarantula over your head.” Or, “They’re coming to wreck our house today.” Or, “We’re having Sloppy Joes for dinner. You’re having flies.”
Actually it’s Timmy’s fault. If he didn’t believe everything I say, maybe I’d stop.
Ham drove me and Cootyhead to the station. From there we took the train into the city. I sat at the window on one side of the aisle, she sat on the other.
Coming into the city, you’d never know it was Christmas from the looks of the ratty backyards of some black neighborhoods we passed. I was glad Calvin didn’t live there. I wondered if they had candles or wreaths or anything in the front.
When we got off the train and met my father, a lady was with him. My father looked happy and a little proud. He said her name so loud and slow and clear, like an announcement, that I kind of glanced around to see who else he was talking to.
“Children,” he said, “may I present to you—Miss… Barbara… Silverstein.”
She looked okay. She wasn’t the first girlfriend we ever saw my father with. But it was the first time we ever saw one outside his apartment. And the first time we ever got a last name. She had perfume on.
“Is she Jewish?” I whispered to my father on the way to his place.
He winked. He never winked before in his life. “Is the Pope Catholic?” he goes.
That’s when I started worrying about the presents. I remembered Jews don’t have Christmas, and the holiday they do have is the one where you just get one present a day for eight days. I wondered if the Jews let him join since we saw him last. And even if they didn’t, maybe he was trying to impress Barbara Silverstein. Maybe if he had Christmas stuff in his apartment, she wouldn’t like him. Maybe she was a plant. Maybe she was only tricking my father into thinking she liked him, when all the time she was really sent over by some rabbi to check out to see if he qualified. Maybe that’s what my father was trying to tell me with the wink. I had to be careful.
Dad was driving, with Barbara Silverstein riding shotgun. She kept turning around to talk to us in the back. She was clever, all right, trying to see how Gentile we were.
Like she said, “Well, did you kids have a merry Christmas?”
“Merry what?” I said. But she didn’t notice, because Cootyhead was already telling her all the stuff she got. Cootyhead instantly adores every one of my dad’s girlfriends. She wants him to get married again.
“Hanukkah wasn’t bad either,” I said.
I could tell by her expression, that took her by surprise. But she recovered quick. “And how about you, Jason? Did you get a lot of presents too?”
“Oh… one,” I said.
“Gee,” she goes, “is that all?”
“Mm… not really,” I said. I looked her straight in the eye. “I got seven more coming.”
Cootyhead squeals, “Waddaya mean? You got lotsa stuff!”
As soon as Barbara Silverstein turned, I kicked my stupid sister. “Dad-deee!” she bawls. “He’s kicking me!” She picks up the windshield ice scraper and hits me about fifty times with it.
But my mind’s on other things. “Hey Dad,” I said. “Have any lox lately?”
I could see her ears perk up.
“You bet,” he said. “I’d be eating it if it was twenty dollars a pound.”
Great answer, Dad, I thought. Now we’re cooking.
“Bagels too?” I said.
“By the bushel,” he said.
“Find any new delis lately?” I said.
“None left to find,” he said. “I have been to every deli within a twenty-five-mile radius.” Barbara Silverstein laughed. My father looked at her. “It’s true,” he said.
Hear that, Barbara Silverstein?
I kept trying to think of all I knew about Jews from Marty Renberg. I asked my father if he had a good time at church—on Saturday. And if he stomped on any glasses at a wedding lately. And if he was being careful not to mess around with any ham.
His answers didn’t always make too much sense. Not to me anyway. I could see Barbara Silverstein taking notes in her head. In fact I was sure she had a little recorder in her pocketbook.
As it turned out, we didn’t go right back to my father’s place. We went to see the Ice Capades. It was part of our present. Barbara Silverstein and my father sat in the middle, between me and Cootyhead. Except when they were clapping, they held hands the whole time.
Every once in a while, when the show got a little boring (I would’ve rather gone to a football or basketball game), I would ask Barbara Silverstein something. Like, “Did you ever go to Israel?” And, “Do rabbis get married?” And, “Do you know Marty Renberg?”
About halfway through the show she got up and left (either for the bathroom or to check in with her boss rabbi). She left her pocketbook under her seat. I saw my chance. I reached down for it.
“I better hold this till she comes back,” I said to my father.
He nodded. “Good idea.”
Then, when he was busy watchin
g, I sort of slouched myself so my mouth was near the pocketbook. I couldn’t risk opening it. I could only hope the hidden recorder would hear me. I waited for the next applause. And soon as it came, I whisper-said into the pocketbook, “Bill Herkimer? Ah yes, he’s the Jewish fellow, isn’t he? No? Goodness, he certainly fooled me.” I made my voice sound different, like a man-in-the-street interview.
When the next applause came I changed my voice again and said, “Bill Herkimer.… Sure! The one with all the Jewish friends.”
Next time: “Herkimer… Herkimer… You must mean the fellow that has that great supply of beanies.”
Then: “Bill Herkimer… y’know, I always said that guy’d make a great Jew.”
Then Barbara Silverstein came back.
Well, I did all I could. I just settled back and watched the rest of the show. When we got back to my father’s, things got a little confusing again. The presents were there. Two Gentile type all-in-one-day piles. Along with a little silver tree on the coffee table and a big red and white Styrofoam candy cane on the apartment door. I mean, any way you looked at it it spelled C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S.
And Barbara Silverstein was right there, soaking it all in. The only thing I could think was, my father figured he owed us a Christmas, and he was going to see that we got one. Even if it cost him points with the Jews.
Late that night, after Barbara Silverstein left, Cootyhead asks her usual question: “You gonna marry her, Daddy?”
My father took off his shoes. It hit me that for the first time since he moved away, his shoes weren’t white. He was changing. “Probably,” he said. What he didn’t do was the usual stuff, like lift Cootyhead up to the ceiling or tickle her and say cutesy things like, “Now what would you do if I said yes?” No. He didn’t even look up. He just kept pulling his shoes off and kind of nodded a little and said “Probably” about marrying Barbara Silverstein. Like he would say “baked” if a waitress asked him how he wanted his potato.
That’s how I knew—not from what he said, but how, and his shoes weren’t white—that Barbara Silverstein was going to be my stepmother.